Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[549] in Hooker. [Loud applause.] Men say he has faults,--faults which some of his predecessors did not have. [Laughter.] Perhaps he has, but in my opinion a diamond with a flaw is better than a pebble without. [Applause.] I do not set one defeat against him. I think, as Lord Bacon says, that a soldier's honor should be of a strong web which slight matters will not stick to. I believe Hooker's is of that kind. He means to fight; he knows how to fight; and those two are new elements at the head of the army. On the other side there are three elements. Lee means to fight, and knows how to fight, and he is deadly in earnest. We have had men who neither knew how to fight, nor meant to fight,--of no ability. Now we have ability to match the other side. We yet lack earnestness, ideas, a willingness to sacrifice everything, a readiness to accept the issue, courage and industry in thinking. We have now two Commanders-in-chief. They both live in Washington. The sad news reaches us to-day that one means to take the field. [Laughter.] Lincoln and Halleck,--they sit in Washington, commanders-in-chief, exercising that disastrous influence which even a Bonaparte would exercise on a battle, if he tried to fight it by telegraph a hundred miles distant. But now it is said one of them means to take the field. Heaven forbid [Applause.] The difference between Halleck and Fremont is just this: one has not learned anything since he graduated at West Point, and does not wish to. As long as he rules, West Point, dead lumber, rules. An old adage says, “A fool is never a great fool till he has learned Latin.” And so a man is never utterly incorrigible till he graduates at West Point. [Laughter.] General Halleck does not mean to undertake the labor of thinking. He is too indolent to go about to examine a new idea. It is enough for him that it was not in the text-books when he graduated [Laughter.]